Page 52 of Sanctuary

“Not really. But sometimes we go to great lengths to protect ourselves emotionally. I’m exhibit one in that regard.”

“What do you mean?”

He turns his head to meet my eyes. “I was hurt. Very badly. And instead of dealing with it, I pretended I didn’t care. About anything. A good man would have worked through the pain and maintained his compassion and moral compass. He would have continued to do good in the world. I did none of those things.”

“But—” I cut off my own objection because Aidan is telling the truth. I can hardly deny it. “What happened to you is understandable. Who’s going to blame you after what you went through?”

“I blame myself. I’m not a good man, Breanna.”

“I think you are. You’re a good man who lost his way.”

“Your… your faith in me matters to me. More than you’ll ever know. But you don’t know everything I’ve been. And life hurt you as much as it hurt me, but you didn’t lose yourself.”

“Didn’t I?”

“No.” His back stiffens, and for the first time he loses the mildness of his composure. “You didn’t.”

I think about that. Wonder—hope—he’s right. But I’m not sure. For a long time, I’ve felt emptied of everything that genuinely makes me human.

“You had your sister,” he adds. “Your connection to her kept you from ever becoming me.”

My eyes burn, and I bite my lip as I think about Del. About how taking care of her was the only thing that gave me purpose and meaning on my very worst days. “Yeah. But it’s not your fault you didn’t have any family left to hold on to.”

“Maybe.”

We’re quiet for a few minutes, wrapped up in our own thoughts. The wheels of the cart as they turn crunch softly in the remaining snow.

Then finally he asks in an almost diffident voice, “So what would you like things to look like when we get back?”

“I guess… I think… You wouldn’t mind if I travel with you?” I search his expression for any sign of reluctance or anxiety.

His eyes blaze with warm relief. “No. I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

“Then maybe we can try that. At least to start with. If being together all the time doesn’t work, then we can figure something else out that lets us do some of our own jobs. But I don’t want us to be in competition. And I don’t want to only see you occasionally.”

“Good. I don’t want that either.”

There’s no way for me to doubt that he means it.

In the time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him so happy.

It makes me happy too.

We camp overnight and reach the militia compound around noon the following day.

Agatha is expecting only one of us to make it back first. Aidan offered for me to claim the win for returning with the wine, but I refused, so we give the bottles to her together.

“This was not the deal,” she says, her eyebrows lifting in skeptical amusement. “What happened to the contest?”

“We changed terms,” I explain. There’s no reason to give this woman any details on our relationship.

Her eyes move from me to Aidan. “I see that. So what do you expect me to do with this?”

“You’ve got the wine you requested. So you can pay us whatever you would have paid one of us. If you’d like to choose only one of us to work with you in the future, that’s fine. Or we’reboth happy to work with you.” I meet her eyes evenly to show that I’m serious. “It’s entirely up to you.”

“And if I declare my offer void because you changed the terms?”

“That’s your decision. We’d like to work with you, and we think we could do a lot of jobs for you that would be an unnecessary risk for your own people. But it’s up to you. We’re not asking for anything more than we were as individuals, but we’re also not asking any less.”

---